Kharn said:
Blade Runner said:
Online comics suck big time. Comics and computers just don't mix well together. Comics should be done with ink on paper (yeah, I'm pretty conservative about these things).
Most of 'em are ('cept stuff like Diesel Sweeties, which are pixelated). Most "online comic artists" draw their comics on paper and then scan it...
I'm gonna have to jump in here - actually, a whole lot of the comics currently online are completely produced by a computer. Comics like
8-Bit Theater and
Diesel Sweeties are obviously digital creations, with no real similarities with paper and ink comics.
But does that mean they don't qualify as comics? If I remember correctly,
all of Scott McCloud's
Reinventing Comics was created digitally, through a Wacom tablet. Not one panel was created using pen and paper. Does that mean that his work is invalid as a comic?
Or take
Homestar Runner - an animated "comic." They spend approximately eight hours working on each Strong Bad e-mail, but there are no paper or pencils in sight.
Some of us webcomic creators lack the resources (and yes, sometimes we also lack the artistic talent) to produce a pen-and-paper comic strip. I don't have a scanner, and no one wants to look at the drawings I produce by hand. Using a computer to make my comics grants me a much larger degree of freedom to do what I want artistically. Even simple things like .gif animations allow me to do things that I could never do with just paper and pencil. If I make a mistake, I can easily repair it, rather than trash the whole project and start afresh.
I get about 150-200 readers daily. I wouldn't be producing a comic if it weren't for the computer's ability to let me do it my way. So whether or not I'm creating a comic according to the most conservative of definitions, I don't really care. If those 150-200 people get enjoyment out of some simple, Flash-created comic strips, then that's just fine by me.
